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Structural features of populations, such as diversity or inequality, are typically used to explain overall patterns of intergroup interaction (for instance overall patterns of friendships between immigrant and native groups). While intergroup interaction is a component of social integration, recent studies are able to distinguish between intergroup interaction and homophily, which is an important component of social integration because it reflects individual-level attitudes or preferences. Homophily refers to the fact that individuals often prefer to associate with those who are similar with themselves (for instance those who share the same native or immigrant background). While forms of inequality are known to structurally diminish intergroup association, whether inequality increases homophily remains an open question. This study proposes and tests novel hypotheses on inequality as an origin of homophily. Specifically, this study will test whether two forms of inequality, (1) direct socioeconomic inequality and (2) the consolidation (or correlation) of socioeconomic status and immigrant background, exacerbate immigrant-native homophily within adolescent friendships in school classrooms. Using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) of friendship networks captured by the CILS4EU (the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries) survey, the findings indicate that consolidation, but not inequality, exacerbates native-immigrant homophily. This indicates that existing studies underestimate the implications of inequality for social integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic ancestry testing is a controversial industry, with scholars questioning the tests legitimacy as well as their potential to increase racial essentialism. Yet despite these controversies, genetic ancestry testing continues to grow in popularity in the United States as a way to either confirm or uncover ethnoracial ancestry. While research is beginning to examine people's interpretations of their ancestry test results, little consideration has been given to realworld outcomes of taking these tests, like their impact on changes in the ethnoracial make-up of social networks. This paper asks whether (1) taking the test, and (2) receiving results of non- European background impacts ethnoracial network diversity for a sample of White Americans. We address these questions using an original randomized controlled trial of White, non-Hispanic Americans, half of whom received genetic ancestry tests. Unexpected findings show that testtakers network diversity shrinks post-test, and especially for those with more diverse networks to begin with. We further explore these patterns, drawing on 57 qualitative follow-up interviews with study participants, and present three potential theoretical explanations for the finding. We discuss how future research can adjudicate between these explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social ties and the sharing of sensitive information (or secrets) predict that individuals are likely to confide this information in both strong (e.g. family) and weak (e.g. coworkers) social ties. With previous findings offering inconclusive and highly contextualized patterns of disclosure, we suggest that developing understanding of the process of and motivations for disclosure may offer a stepping-stone to clarity. To this end, we conducted indepth interviews with 78 LGBTQ individuals asking about the information they keep from their parents and the dynamics of the parent-child relationship. Presented here are preliminary findings (and background) of this research. Cursory findings reveal that information sharing does not have a dichotomous outcome, but rather is a spectrum that includes partial disclosure of information. Additionally, we find that previously accepted characteristics of the social tie, such as homophily and anticipated empathy, are not enough to account for disclosure. We find that respect in the tie should be counted among the chief precursors to disclosure. Finally, we find an overwhelming desire for full-disclosure in the parent-child tie and that the decision to withhold information is informed by a desire to protect the parent-child relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. immigration law requires its consular officers in 157 countries each year to deny millions of short-term visitor visas to foreign nationals if they lack a strong socio-economic and social ties in their country of origin because of concerns such individuals will overstay their visas and immigrate. Previous researchers have sought to explain state-selectivity of migrants by 1) interviewing, and ethnographically observing how bureaucrats typify and select migrants (Bouchard 2000, Gilboy 1991, Infantino 2017, Satzewich 2015) or 2) comparing the demographic characteristics of immigrants to entire populations of non-migrants in countries of migrant origin (Feliciano 2005, Kapur 2010), most of whom may have not have any interest in entering the US territory. Neither approach has systematically examined what distinguishes those granted and those denied visas with raw data from nonimmigrant visa applicants, nor have they determined within the population of those that want to enter a country which can do so legally and which cannot. In this paper, I draw upon survey data I collected directly from 2397 nonimmigrant visa applicants exiting US consular bureaus in Beijing and Chengdu to show that the odds that they obtain a nonimmigrant visa to visit the US is not significantly or strongly associated with most socio-economic and social tie indicators as consulates and immigration law suggest but instead on positively indicators of cultural habitus (e.g. years of education, attendance at a selective school, years at current job, and the geographic scope of visas acquired) and an expressed interest in immigrating. I argue that such a cultural habitus enables the applicant to present the self in a way the officer feels encounters as relatable on the basis of homophily, undermining their task of keeping prospective immigrants out. This study contributes to our understanding of how cultural habitus is associated with legal nonimmigrant selectivity, limits to a government's capacity to control migration, and social mobility and inequality both between- and within migrant-sending and -receiving societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining reciprocal behavior has been a major lens for studying fundamental dimensions of social interaction for several social theories. We extend the objects of reciprocal exchange from valued objects and actions to cultural objects of indeterminate value. Using archival data, we analyze historical (1900-1950) covering patterns among American musicians. We find that one fourth of all covers were reciprocated. But, the odds of such reciprocity vary considerably by personal and dyadic characteristics. Notably homophily on race, gender, status, and genre predict significantly greater odds of reciprocity. Thus, while existing explanations for reciprocity tend to rely on claims of general motivations like personal gain, conformity to norms, or desires for balance and fairness, our research suggests that these motivations are socially and categorically structured. To the extent that reciprocity is malleable to notions of difference/similarity on salient social and cultural variables, these findings suggest that universalizing ethics or logics for reciprocity may overlook how social difference define the situations where such ethics or logics become active a priori. We also find that similarity itself may vary in its effect of producing reciprocity. As songs, the media through which musicians demonstrate reciprocity, acquire the status of standards, they come to serve more as signifiers of belonging to a group than they do as indicators of a relationship between individuals. Furthermore, the odds of reciprocity decrease as a song's frequency of being covered grows. The creation of standards, accordingly, contributes to the forging of group identities and belonging but simultaneously unembeds songs from particular relationships. Finally, we find that interactions between different combinations of status produce significantly different rates or reciprocity, with pairings of middle status artists being the most likely to exhibit reciprocal covering patterns, suggesting that role conformity of different status groups may also serve as important conditions for the activation of motivations for reciprocal behavior. Thus, we conclude that reciprocal mechanisms have an important effect on the repertoire of individual musicians and the distribution of songs across social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homophily, or the tendency for social contact to occur among those who are similar, plays a crucial role in structuring our social networks. However, empirical research that tests for homophily almost always assumes it is an unvarying process that operates similarly for all social ties, regardless of their strength or level of intimacy. As data on weighted networks, or networks where ties are assigned quantitative measures of strength, become increasingly available, network researchers need to consider whether homophily processes operate differently for ties with varying weights. Here, I take this approach by first defining two variants of homophily that can arise in weighted networks: (1) strong tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with high values to cluster together similar peers, and (2) weak tie homophily, or the tendency for ties with low edge weights to connect same-attribute actors. I develop new parameters that can be included in valued ERGMs to distinguish between strong and weak tie homophily. Then, I use simulated data to empirically demonstrate the utility in differentiating between the two variants. I find that, in most networks, there are observable differences in the magnitude of strong versus weak tie homophily. Additionally, when there are low levels of clustering on the attribute of interest, distinguishing between strong and weak tie homophily often reveals that these processes operate in opposite directions. Since strong and weak ties carry substantively different implications, I argue that differentiating between the two homophily variants can uncover novel insights for a variety of social processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

America is becoming ever more of a multi-racial society, and from the beginning has been home to an eclectic mix of political ideologies, yet increasingly the political sphere is polarized. These broad macro-societal patterns are reflected in individuals' social networks, which can be sources not only of comfort but also conflict. Though relationship difficulties can coexist with the range of benefits obtained from a particular relationship, to the extent that difficulties in interpersonal relationships may undermine social connectedness, there may be ancillary consequences of interpersonal conflict within personal networks to one's well-being and health. Although the pursuit of diversity within civic society is a quintessential part of the multi-ethnic melting pot of America, the association between network diversity and health-related markers of social connectedness has been undertheorized and underexplored. Because of this, this study seeks to examine whether political and racial/ethnic difference within one's personal network, and a sense of control over one's destiny, are associated with experiencing difficulties in interpersonal relationships and health-related markers of social connectedness. These markers include feeling lonely, depressive symptoms, and impaired social support capacity. To test these questions, we drew upon Wave I of the University of California Social Networks Study (UCNETS), a survey of adults (n=1,159), ages 21-30 and 50-70, spanning six counties in the San Francisco Bay area. We found that racial network diversity was associated with increased loneliness and depressive symptoms, whereas political network diversity was associated with increased levels of family and friend support. Surprisingly, we found that political network homogeneity was associated with increased difficulties with alters. A perception of control of one's destiny plausibly explained a large proportion of the relationship between network diversity and both loneliness and depression, and having difficult alters mediated the relationship between network diversity and social connectedness. While the sociological literature on homophily tends to emphasize structural underpinnings of observed patterns of segregation, this study shows who benefits from maintaining social homogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of financial contagion and herd behavior share important properties with diffusion models in sociology and organization studies. However, both theoretical models and empirical tests of financial ignore relational models of network-driven diffusion processes. In this paper, we use a network approach to study the diffusion of a new (and ultimately destructive) financial technology, mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in Spain. This is an informative case because the Spanish MBS market emerged de novo in the 1990s, and because of key institutional features of this market. We test for social influence processes based on communicative, competitive and collaborative relations (as well as spatial proximity) using network autocorrelation models. Results show that Spanish savings banks tended to emulate the behavior of their historical competitors, but we find no evidence of communicative or collaborative diffusion processes. This result is robust to controlling for a variety of relational and bank-level properties and strongly mitigates concern about confounding homophily effects typically found in diffusion studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often assume that organizational belonging necessarily entails "fitting-in" sociodemographically with other members, such that if a person is not like everyone else (e.g.: being black in an all-white environment), then she must not belong. At first, this logic seems like common sense, especially at college, where nonwhite students are usually outnumbered. Research on minority student belonging in university implies that not "fitting in" constitutes a significant barrier to feeling part of the campus community (Hurtado & Carter 1997; Strayhorn 2012). Classic research on the power of homophily (McPherson 1983; Popeliarz & McPherson 1995) and ingroup prototypes (Hogg 2001) also point to the alignment of socio-demographic "fit" with "belonging". However, by assuming that the only standard for "fitting-in" is sharing socio-demographic characteristics, researchers forget that group members can utilize other standards to assess their "fit" in an organization (Greenberg & Mollick 2017), such as whether they adhere to organizational values or participate in institutionalized activities. Moreover, prior research does not make clear exactly what ruler of reference people use to determine "fit"-is the basis for comparison the group's most average, most typical, or most ideal member? I argue that "fitting-in" and "belonging" are under-examined and under-theorized concepts. By ignoring the actual standards of fit used by students, and by conflating socio-demographic "fit" with "belonging", schools may create assimilationist policies that inadvertently isolate minority students even more. Instead of imposing a priori assumptions on what "fit" and "belonging" mean, I draw on interviews with minority students (N=57) at a predominantly white college to investigate the bases students actually use to determine their "fit" on campus and how they characterize the relationship between "fitting-in" and "belonging." Results suggest students are both individually liberated and socially constrained by their standard of comparison, but that they can "belong" even when they do not "fit-in". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists often attribute political echo chambers in social networks to the growing political divides in America. However, little attention was given to the fundamental antecedents of political echo chambers: Where does the remarkable level of political homophily come from? Drawing on sociological theory of network formation that addresses the influence of macro contexts on the "pool" of micro ties, I argue that the rise of echo chambers is not just a matter of changes in individual political preference but a consequence of the increasing "sociodemographic consolidation", i.e., the associations between socially salient dimensions that translate into segregating forces. To formalize this claim, I develop a novel computational model that allows agents' network and opinion formation to vary upon position alignment across multiple attributional states. It shows that sociodemographic consolidation conditions the emergence of political echo chambers, influencing political polarization. The generalizability of my consolidation model offers new insights on the social origin of political polarization, illuminating relational processes whereby the between-group inequalities and the political alignment of sociodemographic characteristics can exacerbate opinion polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research shows that experientially similar others--those who have confronted the same stressor or who occupy the same social role--are uniquely equipped to provide empathic understanding and tailored coping strategies to individuals navigating comparable, taxing circumstances. Using the case of premedical education, fixed-effects regression analyses of longitudinal egocentric network data (n=286) indicate that premeds whose support networks include a greater proportion of premedical peers over time experience fewer depressive symptoms. However, among premeds who report greater anticipatory stress about medical school admission, the presence of additional peers in support networks amplifies the detrimental effects of anticipatory stressors. Qualitative data (n=39) help shed light on this empirical puzzle. Although peers offer a broad spectrum of support functions, they can also accentuate stressors or serve as a basis for negative social comparison. These findings introduce new considerations for theorizing the role of similar other support in the stress process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social commerce is a new variant of e-commerce, fitted with social media technologies that allow users to interact with each other. These interactions may facilitate feelings of homophily, and may propagate herd behaviour within the online medium. This work-in-progress paper hones in on how homophily and herding arise within the social commerce context, and examines how it impacts a consumer's' decision-making process. A research model is proposed and an experimental methodology is outlined. Potential contributions to both theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study related to communication behavior patterns of Twitter use among members of the U.S. Congress. Topics discussed include homophily as main drivers of communication network formation; high tendency in forming Twitter communication ties in Congress members with homophily characteristics; and role of social relationship in communication network formation.

Are people with similar personalities more likely to connect on Facebook, and have more mutual friends when they are indeed connected? Using a large personality survey and behavioral dataset on 52,004 Facebook users, we tested whether people with similar Big Five personality traits were more likely to be Facebook Friends than random chance. Controlling for dyads' age, sex, the number of Facebook Friends, and personality main effects, results indicate that people with similar levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism were more likely to be Facebook Friends. Dyads with similar levels of agreeableness tend to share more mutual Facebook Friends, but such effect was nonsignificant for other personality factors. Because people are exposed to information and worldviews from their Facebook Friends, we argue that personality homophily might affect the size of second-degree networks, as well as exposures to political ideology and emotions in shared status updates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists are often criticized for living in their own bubbles, a phenomenon industry commentators have referred to as groupthink, while in scholarship the tendency of individuals to connect with people who are like them is termed homophily. This age-old process has come under scrutiny in recent times due to the arrival of social network sites, which have been viewed as both working against but also leading to more homophily. In journalism scholarship, these processes are still little understood, however. Focusing on the social network site Twitter and drawing on a large-scale analysis of more than 660,000 tweets sent by 2908 Australian journalists during one year, this study shows that journalists continue to live, with only a few exceptions, in bubbles in their online interactions with each other along parameters such as gender, organizational affiliation, beat and location. However, we find it is important to differentiate between types of interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to expand on the growing body of literature surrounding corporate social advocacy or corporate activism. A 3 x 8 experimental survey method of a representative national sample of U.S. participants (n = 1,100) examined the impact of corporate activism on word of mouth intention, purchase intention, change in company belief, change in issue belief, and perceptions of homophily. Issue congruence, perceptions of level of issue controversy, issue salience, and relevance/appropriateness were also studied. Overall results were significant and speak to the societal level impacts of public relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the node degree distribution, clustering, diameter and reciprocity of millions of posts on the Reddit Politics 2014 and compares the discourse quality of different posts. Topics include online social networks also tend to fuel the formation of the echo chamber, where people expose themselves to opinions they tend to agree with and thus like-minded people cluster together in their homophily.

This research compares the different influences of source credibility attractiveness and expertise of the sport celebrity endorser on consumers' intention in purchasing the endorsed brand, introducing a model that integrates impacts of attractiveness related variables and expertise related variables as well as the moderator variable ideal congruity on audiences' parasocial interaction with the sport celebrity. Results of the research reject the assumption that consumers tend to pay more attention on the attractiveness rather than the expertise of the sport celebrity in purchasing the endorsed brand, but validate the salience of the model. Audiences, who hold parasocial interaction with the sport celebrity, are driven by both homophily with the celebrity and reverence to the celebrity as well as ideal congruity between their ideal self-image and image of the celebrity. This model complements the existing literature on sport celebrity endorsement by positing attractiveness and homophily as a salient dimension of sport endorser effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a mixed-methods case study of contemporary newspaper book reviewing in order to unpack how review editors and critics alike invoke socially constructed notions of similarity and interest to explain how and why critics are matched with particular review assignments. The data demonstrate that similarity and interest as allocative principles have a strongly gendered dimension. Quantitative analysis of the gender-pairings of authors, critics, and protagonists for 676 novels and in-depth interviews with critics and review editors reveals that (1) male critics are significantly less likely to review books written by or about women whilst female critics review books by and about men and women with equal frequency; and (2) novels by and about women suffer from or fall into the interest gap, wherein activities and concerns typically coded as male are represented as universal and thus of general interest, but female-coded experiences and concerns are viewed as particularistic and thus of interest to a more limited group of people (i.e., women). The article problematizes our conceptualization and conflation of interest and similarity as bases for evaluation; specifically, the author argues that understandings of who or what is "like me" are not objectively given in one-to-one correspondences but should be understood as asymmetric symbolic relations encoded by status inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Missing data is an important, but often ignored, aspect of a network study. Measurement validity is affected by missing data, but the level of bias can be difficult to gauge. Here, we describe the effect of missing data on network measurement across widely different circumstances. In Part I of this study (Smith & Moody 2013), we explored the effect of measurement bias due to randomly missing nodes. Here, we drop the assumption that data are missing at random: what happens to estimates of key network statistics when central nodes are more/less likely to be missing? We answer this question using a wide range of empirical networks and network measures. We find that bias is worse when more central nodes are missing. With respect to network measures, Bonacich centrality is highly sensitive to the loss of central nodes, while closeness centrality is not; distance and bicomponent size are more affected than triad summary measures and behavioral homophily is more robust than degree-homophily. With respect to types of networks, larger, directed networks tend to be more robust, but the relation is weak. We end the paper with a practical application, showing how researchers can use our results (translated into a publically available java application) to gauge the bias in their own data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on literature of friendship stability and social homophily, the present paper explores questions on the effect of grade-disparity on friendship formation. The objective of this research is to investigate the process of friendship formation focused on grade-disparity where choices whom to befriend are a socialized process. We analyze a seven-waves network dataset of nine high school classes with a total of 416 students in Taiwan. Findings of this study provide some evidence that the friendship ties are likely to be disconnected when the gap of academic achievement between two friends is apart, suggesting a selection process in the class and academic achievement is the sorting mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the small numbers of Blacks on predominantly White campuses and the opportunity for cross-racial tie formation, Black students are incredibly racially homophilous (Antonio 2001; Stearns, Buchmann and Bonneau 2009; McClintock 2010; Wimmer and Lewis 2010). Little network research explores same-race friendship formation (Clarke and Antonio 2012) and none explore Black homophily. Interviews with thirty Black undergraduates at a highly selective university on the West Coast suggest that Black network formation is fraught with obstacles. Unable to form the Black friendships they desired, many students abandoned their cross-racial social networks and renounced prior time commitments to acquire networks they perceived to be uniquely beneficial. Students unwilling to sacrifice found themselves without the Black friendships they desired. These participants demonstrate that what appears to be an effortless and unstructured process of friendship formation is in fact effortful and strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational ecology theory posits that organizations within an organizational field compete for members and their attendant resources. Religious organizations, in this framework, seek out participants to join in their congregational life in order to exist and thrive. This study seeks to identify characteristics of those most likely to form the center niche of congregations. We operationalize attachment theory to this end, specifically drawing on the research literature in attachment to God. We suggest that homophily occurs in congregation along the lines of attachment to God, which can be viewed as fundamental "behavioral and intrapersonal characteristics" that separate congregation participants one from another. Despite the fact that congregations seek to incorporate those who feel far from God, it is possible that insecurely attached individuals are marginalized through the dynamics of religious homophily. Using a national sample, we test several hypotheses related to this theoretical claim, and findings suggest that: 1) participation in congregational life (beyond service attendance) increases with secure attachment to God and decreases with anxious and insecure attachments, 2) this relationship is moderated by length of time attending a particular congregation, and 3) secure attachment to God is associated with higher levels of participation in congregational life for blacks than it is with whites. The primary contribution of this study is to establish that an intrapersonal characteristic--attachment to God--applies to religious congregations just as predicted by organizational ecology theory. The study establishes a clear link between attachment to God and participation in congregational and religious life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]